Affinity diagram

Affinity diagram - used to pull ideas from a group of people and group them into natural relationships... 

It was not long before this empirical concept of chemical affinity became associated with the concept of Newtonian short-range interparticle forces, an identihcation best expressed in Bergman s 1775 monograph, A Dissertation on Elective Attractions, and in attempts, now known to be flawed, by such chemists as Guyton de Morveau, Wenzel, and Kirwan to quantitatively measure these forces—attempts which also culminated in an early precursor of the chemieal equation known as an affinity diagram (Figure 3). 

Figure 3. A typical late 18th-century affinity diagram. (From A. Fourcroy, Elements of Natural History and Chemistry, 1790).

J Method provides a way to organize and refine your innovation ideas, sparking further dialogue and achieving consensus about which ideas are worth developing. Also known as an affinity diagram, KJ Method works best when you have more ideas than you can readily handle or process in your mind. 

Organizing 7. Affinity diagram Organize and summarize qualitative... 

What The affinity diagram is a method to summarize qualitative data into groups with common themes. 

Why The affinity diagram should be used when there are large amounts of qualitative data that must be summarized before proceeding. An example is the answers to open ended questions on a survey. 

Other tools Tools for gathering information that result in qualitative data can lead to an affinity analysis. After constructing an affinity diagram, the results may be summarized in a Pareto chart. Categories developed diuing an affinity analysis can be used for stratification with the other tools. 

AET, see Arbeitswissenschaftliches Erhebungsverfahren zur Tatikgkeitsanalyse Affinity diagrams, 1813, 1815 A fortiori (strength of the argument) principle, 2367... 

The data obtained during the monitoring session was decomposed in a series of action steps, including the purpose, the actor, the tools, the methods used, and descriptions of the possible options (Kuniavsky, 2003), if available. The answers from the interview were analysed by creating an affinity diagram (Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1993). 

Open-ended questions can be a good method of getting to the real feelings of the customer. These are much harder to evaluate, however, as all of the responses must be collected and then an affinity diagram developed so the common themes of the comments can be understood. 

Affinity diagrams can be used in supply chain management to help determine methods that may be used to help improve a supplier s performance. This is a tool that will put similar ideas together to see where some relationships might lie. As the groups are developed, new ideas may be generated and then analyzed as to how they can be used to help the supplier. 

Cullen used numbers in affinity diagrams (see Vol. Ill, p. 134). John Elliot added a scheme with numbers to the Bergman diagrams so as to indicate the direction of double decomposition between pairs of salts e.g. affinity between alkali and sulphuric acid = 9, between silver calx and nitric acid=2, between nitric acid and alkali = 8, between sulphuric acid and silver calx=4. Since 8 and 4 is greater than 9 and 2 , silver nitrate and potassium sulphate will react to form potassium nitrate and silver sulphate. Elliot also showed that reactions in alcohol may differ from those in water, e.g. lead soap dissolved in alcohol is decomposed by common salt hence only one set of tables in the wet way is insufficient. 

Fig. 2. This Affinity Diagram schematize two acid-base reactions...

The end of 18 Century and the first half of 19 added other essential pieces to the puzzle of Chemical Kinetics and Chemistry in general. There is a surprising absent actor in the debate on Chemical Affinities, the father of modern Chemistry Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794). The Lavoisier Revolution brought quantitative measurements to Chemistry and so to Affinity Diagrams. We can see one of the first examples of stoichiometric equation from Lavoisier works in the following figure (Lavoisier 1782). 

Why Lavoisier did not play a role in the debate about Affinities if he ap>phed quantitative methods also for affinity diagrams The causes may be many, for example the fad that he was outside main academic drcles, (he was member of the French Academy of Sciences from the age of 25, but never gained an academic position). The reasons are explained by Lavoisier himself in the Trait6 l mentaire de chimie, and follow Bergan recommendations ... 

Affinity diagrams were used by Black in his lectures. Thomson says Robison told him that Black, who used the diagrams from the beginning of his professorship, informed him that he had learnt them from Cullen. Klaproth and WolfP say that Cullen used numbers to represent affinities (see Fig. 14)... 

In his lectures from 1758 Cullen used affinity diagrams, which were also used in 1759 by Fordyce. He included lectures on heat, referring to the well-known experiment (mentioned by Francis Bacon, see Vol. II, p. 397) for proving that the sense of touch is untrustw orthy in comparing temperatures, in which the hands are placed one in hot and one in cold water, and then both in tepid water. After 1766 Cullen devoted himself mostly to medicine and materia medica. 

After collecting the VOC, an affinity diagram was drawn to analyze the information obtained. Affinity diagrams are used to surface the deep structure in voiced customer requirements. The affinity diagram, also known as the KJ method, is used to unlock creative thinking. This method looks for a different way of describing some relationship. The said diagram is shown in Fig. 2. 

F. A. Kekule Kekule s Symbols Blomstrand s Symbols Wuitz s Formulae Loschmidt s Formulae Graphic Formulae Kekule s Benzene Formula The Benzene Hexagon Affinity Diagram (Bergman)... 

---